| Show BURIED WHILE ALIVE A Cruel Rite That Was Resorted To in India In Underground Cells The annals of eastern nations furnish I abundant examples of this custom I which has been resorted to from a variety of motives and under very I different circumstances The practice i may be employed for the purpose oft I extinguishing life or maintaining life I for a prolonged period without food or I drink There is therefore a fatal and i nonfatal kind of living inhumation The common description of burial alive I jamadh is leper burial which used I to be very frequently resorted to jn India often at the request or urgent i entreaty of the victims of this loathsome j I loath-some di ease A pit was dug by the i relatives of the leper or by other lepers and the unfortunate cast into it and smothered with earth In some I cases the wreck was burned to death j I before being thrown into the pit I Opium water was frequently drunk by executioners and executed on such occasions executoners casions This cruel rite lingered InK I In-K shmlr and some parts of Rajputana till within very recent years Indeed I it is questionable whether i is even 1 now altogether extinct Lepers have been known in the extremity of their I distress and misery to commit suicide by jumping Into pits I Burial alive has also in India constituted con-stituted a mode of suttee or votuntary i sacrifice of life by widows who have I lfe been cast by sympathizing and obliging I oblig-ing request into the same graves as II their deseased husbands Homicidal burial alive has been used as a means I of punishment of crime torture revenge re-venge or murder and the burial has j been in such cases either complete or I incomplete The nonfatal form of living liv-ing burial has always excited more interest than the fatal which however I how-ever supplies material for a strange I and large chapter in the history of V human crime The phenomenon of crme hibernation yields some sort of poun i I tenance to the idea that the animal organism Is capable under certain curoumstances namely Conservation of body heat perfect inaction and V preservation from njl external stimuli of living for weeks If not months V without food or drink and records of prolonged fasting with or without sleep are forthcoming with the wih regularity reg-ularity of the announcements of gigantic gigan-tic gooseberries seaserpents ggan eightlegged calves i The alleged proceeding of Indian fakirs and Persian dervishes are cited in support of the possibility of human hibernation in under ground cells The proceedings of these gentry must however how-ever be very liberally discounted They certainly achieve some very extraordinary ex-traordinary feats of endurance and self abnegation Their efforts to set at defiance the laws and inclinations of the body and by contemplation fasting fast-ing and neglect of the ordinary usages and requirements of life to mortify the flesh and become absorbed into the divine soul which is according to the tenets of pedantism the spring and essence of existence surpass physiological possibility and necessarily necessar-ily engender imposture which may be conscious or unconscious or bdth This element of Imposture Involuntary or designed enters into all their proceedings pro-ceedings and is seldom either diligently gently looked for or detected The love of the marvelous Is strongly developed de-veloped among V rientals and fakir stories must be taken with a liberal grain of salt Tales of prolonged living liv-ing burials V are common enough in 1 < 111 l l ll illrb r I India but in no case ha tHe proceeding proceed-ing been subjected to scientific observation I obser-vation or systematic watching and in i some instances the grave in which the devotee las proposed to hibernate has been uncovered V after the lapse of a hew days and its occupant found dead IBritsh Medical Journal |
